Whether we may think it’s excessive or not, 4K is slowly starting to become the next standard in video. It makes me think of a criticism I once heard against digital filmmaking: that it becomes too real for the viewer to suspend disbelief. Growing up, many of us have been used to movies being shot on 24 FPS film; in a way, it allows us to “escape” the real world and watch a story set in a fantasy world. The blurs, light leaks, and contrast burns – every imperfection from that film – separates the world of the movie from the reality of the world in which we reside.

Fast-forward to today’s time, and you have the Hobbit films being released in 48 FPS across theaters worldwide. When Peter Jackson filmed the trilogy, he described watching the final result as looking through a window. The problem is that many people don’t want to view movies in a world that real.

With the 4th of July having just passed, I think it’s a good time for us to look at some natural lights in the sky. Brace yourselves; here’s a video that wholeheartedly deserves the any amazement you’ll probably throw at it.

We’ve all seen some amazing time-lapse videos out there. Personally, I’m captivated most by the videos people shoot of the night sky. Living near a major city, it’s hard to find a field out there that doesn’t have utility poles, lights, and buildings, so I really don’t get much of a chance to experience looking at the stars like others do.

This video’s another night-sky time-lapse, but with a (pretty literal) twist. Instead of watching the stars fly past the camera in the night sky, you get to watch the stars move gracefully in sync with the rotation of the camera itself. I can’t think of a better way to explain it than , the director of the video, himself: [Read more…]

I’ve been following news on Sony’s curved sensor since they first announced it back in April, and I’ll be honest; I didn’t think we’d be getting a look into it nearly this quick, but this is shocking to me. I must have forgotten that Sony started on this project back in 2012, because they’ve just uploaded the first official picture from the sensor online – and here it is.

About a month back, we featured an immersive and exhilarating underwater project done by photographer Von Wong. For those that never looked into it, Von Wong was the man behind a photoshoot done completely underwater – and it wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before. Before his work caught my eye, no photographic work done near at a shipwreck was quite as captivating at all. And if you haven’t seen it by now, you’re about to.

Back when we first posted about it, we featured a video that Von Wong uploaded to accompany his work, detailing the introductory basics of what it took to execute a project like that. It’s a privilege for me to introduce his next part in the making of this project: the second part to his video series, giving you an in-depth look behind the scenes at exactly how this photoshoot was executed.

While Microsoft and Canon have been known to partner up in the past, this time around the situation looks pretty different. There’s a number of reasons this agreement took place, and the top possibilities revolve around the mobile industry. Microsoft and Canon may not have disclosed the terms of the agreement, but they did mention that “certain digital imaging and mobile consumer products have been included in the agreement.”

With Microsoft’s recent business ventures with Nokia, the patent agreement may very well be the beginning of an involvement by Canon in Nokia’s Windows Phone line. With how heavily focused the mobile company is on its smartphone cameras in the Lumia line, Canon would be a great company to get support from.

With how much of a push companies are making these days toward cloud-based storage, is it really a wonder that phones are still being sold with an infuriatingly small 16 gigabytes of space? When it comes to the actual cloud storage itself, we have to worry about the payments those storage services ask for as well; missing one could inevitably mean that we’d lose what we’d have stored for good. It’s a business model that I’m starting not to like, and I feel like it’s a poor way to ensure the safety of our backed up pictures.

StreamNation is a cloud-based service that’s deciding to do things a little differently; they’ve recently released Shutter, a camera app on iOS that promises us unlimited cloud storage for pictures absolutely free of charge. The app itself is simple: another point-and-shoot interface, but with a different method of storage.

Let’s face it; we’re not scientists and the name of this law could frighten many of us. The reality is that this is a very basic concept with a very technical name: the inverse square law of light.

When it comes to lighting subjects, whether you’re a wedding photographer of a feature film cinematographer, the possibilities given to you are endless. Sometimes you don’t know how you want to photograph something just because you might not know whether you’re doing it in the best way possible. With so many different ways to light something, it’s pretty easy to start doubting yourself, and it happens to us all the time.

Lytro’s one of the few companies out there that are pioneering in what’s called “light field” technology; their light field sensors basically take in massive amounts of data and process them into a small picture that you can interact with. The final result helps achieve a sort of post-focusing effect you’d find in Google Camera’s Lens Blur or the HTC One M8’s double-sensor camera. Back about two months ago, Lytro announced a camera called the Illum – one of the first major steps in making a camera like that reality while keeping the specs a bit up to date.

But right now, the technology’s still in its growing stages. The Illum is a first, but at the same time it’s retaining a hefty price tag of around $1500. It’s needless to say that there’s still a lot left to be done with this technology before it can actually be that profitable. Just recently, Sony took a big step for the future of light field sensors by grabbing their own patent for light field sensors. According to the patent [warning, geeky read], apparently Sony has a way to get past some of the limitations that light field sensors bring to the rest of the technology implemented in. Put that together with the fact that this is Sony we’re talking about, which both has the tech power and the market interest, and you’ve got a pretty promising look at what the future might hold for these new sensors.

Earlier this month, Apple raised the bar for the iPhone’s camera when it announced iOS 8; the upcoming software is set to give iOS users features such as manual exposure, time-lapse photography, and more. With the passing of Google I/O just last week, we were introduced to Android L. After a weekend of coverage, it looks like Android’s camera is about to get a few small updates, as well…

For a while now, Aperture has been Apple’s signature professional photo management app, similar to what Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro have done for video and music. After WWDC, however, things looked a bit bleak for the software after Apple announced its rollout of its new Photos app – the keynote went by with no mention of any updates on Aperture itself. Today, it’s been confirmed by the company that development on the software has officially ended.

John Aldred is a portrait and animal photographer in Lancaster, England. you can see some of his work on his website, or find him on Facebook or Twitter.

Stefan Kohler is a conceptual photographer, specialized in mixing science, technology and photography. He is one of the founders of Kamerakind, based in Traunstein, Southern Germany. You can follow him on Facebook or on 500px.com

Liron Samuels is a wildlife and commercial photographer based in Israel.

When he isn't waking up at 4am to take photos of nature, he stays awake until 4am taking photos of the night skies or time lapses.